


Our Little Secret

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: An Orange Shirt (most offensive of all), M/M, Non-fatal suffication, Post-Higuchi Capture period, Restraints, Right in the sweet spot of L's death march
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23822881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: "He didn’t tell anyone about the night. Although L had no way to know, he assumed Light didn’t tell anyone about it either; probably kept it their secret. Sometimes, L wondered if Light forgot about the night happening, the way a person can make something untrue just by forgetting it hard enough – burning, burning all their secrets until they never existed at all."(After getting his memories back, Light wants to give L a gift he thinks the detective will love: Kira, bound up and at L's mercy. Is it the gift that L wants?)
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 26
Kudos: 80





	Our Little Secret

**Author's Note:**

> this took a little bit to solidify as a story but the concept had been in my head for a few weeks. i kept thinking about how we, the fandom, take so many of the images L creates as the final word on his interests (sexual and...well, lbr, mostly sexual), and how we then pass that frame of mind on to Light. so this story is sort of about that. but it's also about how i wanted to write Light wearing an orange shirt at some point, bc no one ever wears orange in fics. thank u to nilah for giving feedback; i super appreciate it!
> 
> as always, i hope you enjoy the fic!

Light contacted L a day after he was released and asked if they could have a late lunch.

“I’d like to see you again,” he said. “Not as a suspect. As friends.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me,” L said. “We haven’t moved into friendship. You still work for me.”

“Barely.” Over the phone, Light’s flippant tone read more truthful than it did in person. “I work in the same office, yeah. But no more chain. No more ticking time clock.”

“All the more reason for us to detangle from each other.”

“Oh, Ryuzaki.” Light sounded fond – _that_ didn’t ping as honest. “Let’s meet at the old café, by the university. You pick up the tab. I don’t have any money since I recently was on _sabbatical_.” His tone lounged through sarcasm – _that_ was real and bitter in L’s ears. “Three tomorrow. I know you’re free.”

“You don’t know.”

“I do. Three is when you have your coffee and cake break. Spend it with me instead.”

L arrived four minutes late to the café. He came in, setting off a set of jingle bells and turning a few heads. One was Light, his hair newly trimmed and in an orange shirt L hadn’t seen before. The color didn’t flatter him, but he wasn’t unattractive in it. When L took a seat opposite him, Light adjusted his collar, laced his fingers together and asked what took L so long.

“Weather.” He flipped through the plastic menu. “Watari hates to drive in rain.”

“That’s funny.” Light laughed when L shot him a confused look. “I mean, he had perfect eye sight with that gun, if I remember right. Funny that he would be worried about driving in the rain.”

“Doesn’t seem like a good topic of conversation for here.” L bit out the words and was satisfied by the quiet acknowledgement of his reprimand flashing over Light’s face. “Do the staff come to the table or” –

A waiter stopped his line of speech and L ordered a tea and scone of the day. Before Light opened his mouth, L ordered for him as well.

“He’ll have coffee, cream on the side, and a slice of whatever bread loaf you have.”

“We have two.” The waiter eyed Light and then L uneasily. “Pumpkin and banana.”

“Hm.” L nodded. “One of each then. Thank you.”

As their menus were folded under the waiter’s arm, Light shot L a half-frustrated, half-bemused look. L didn’t like the look – had gotten it before from Light on nights where the other man knew L didn’t sleep. Written into the folded skin, the eyebrows and nose wrinkling, was a statement of settled disbelief – that Light didn’t know why L did what he did, only that it was all L _could_ do.

“You don’t have to order for me,” Light said.

“I’m picking up the tab,” L said by way of explanation. “In any case, did I get your order right?”

A frown twitched on Light’s lips before deciding on a smile. “Yes,” he said, “and no. Sometimes I like a little sugar too.”

“I’ll have sugar. You can take some of mine.”

Around them was the thrum of evening college students, all drinking coffee and complaining they’d be awake for hours. L squeezed his knees, hands begging to fiddle with something, and grabbed a wooden stirrer. He broke it down the middle and set the two pieces against each other to make a small pyramid.

“I want to give you something.” Light gave each word its own languidness, slouching them off his lips. “A gift?” He stopped in discussion with himself, eyes flickering to the table and then back to L with more intensity. “Yes, a gift. For all your work.”

The waiter swept table side to hand them both their drinks. Light took his with a soft thanks and L started to spoon sugar from the small decorative bowl. His tea almost matched Light’s shirt in color – a garish shade of tangerine. Slow and steady, Light poured a ribbon of cream into his coffee and reached over, tapping L’s hand. The touch stunned him – froze the blood in his veins as Light stole his spoon and put a featherweight amount of sugar in his coffee. He used the spoon to stir, stopping L from putting more sweet in his tea.

Arrogant. Selfish. L ran through a few more words about the smile on Light’s face as he stirred his coffee but couldn’t bring himself to give them real shape in his thoughts. Only their essence remained – their rotten scent caught on the wind and blown out his ears the moment Light set the spoon down.

“A gift doesn’t seem appropriate,” L said. “You don’t owe me anything. Even this meeting is just” – he waved his hand – “extra. A bonus. Favors for one another that we don’t owe each other.”

“I _do_ owe you.” Light nodded as he spoke, again lost in agreement with himself. “You gave me my first experience on an investigation. I know my dad says, you know, that I’ve helped on cases with him before. But not real stuff. Bank robberies, sure, and a couple purse snatchings. But not like what you let me work on.”

“I let you help because I believed you were Kira.” L shook his head – _were_ was a treacherous word to use, but he didn’t care much about lying to Light. “Don’t burden me with presents. You should take your experience and not add strings to it. Let it be what it was.”

“But it was important.” His voice missed the hint of a whine L expected Light to have. Instead, it was sure of itself. “I’ll never forget it. Not a moment.”

“You’re very young.” L said as the waiter slipped their plates onto the table. A sidelong glance from him made L think twice about a large tip. “I’m not old myself, but I know that you are going to have more experiences than this one. Things will happen to you, bad things, like confinement was bad, and you’ll be stuck trying to find a response to those things.”

He forked some scone and held it to his lips, talking into it like a microphone. “I’ve had bad things happen to me, and working past those bad things can take years. Sometimes they never leave.” L paused and reached out, grabbing Light by the wrist. “Don’t make your reaction gratitude. If you thank me now for what happened, you’ll be thanking every bad experience until one of them kills you. Its better you forget these things.”

“That’s morbid.” Light jerked his hand away, hissing as he caught the edge of his cup and coffee singed his hand. “Don’t say that. Don’t make our work ugly.”

“It was ugly.” L ate his scone, the icing cloying and gritty. “No way around that. Kira is ugly. But we’ve caught him. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Higuchi can’t be the true Kira.” Sighing around his next bite, L resigned himself to talking shop among civilians. “You’ve seen the man. Heard him. He’s an idiot and incapable of planning in the meticulous way the previous Kira did.”

Light remained quiet, his focus on the two loafs before him. He took a forkful of the banana bread and chased the bite with coffee.

“Do you think finding Kira would make you happy?” His question was muffled by bread crumbs. “Would you be happy to see who he was, put him behind bars?”

“Maybe. It’s been such a difficult case. Putting him away seems” – L seesawed on the right phrase – “anticlimactic.”

“So Kira should suffer?”

“No. I want to ask him questions,” L said. “I want to know why he did things, how he did them.”

He pointed to the silver wristwatch Light wore. “Haven’t you ever wanted to know how something is built? Like your watch. It’s made of so many different parts that all work together to make the hands choose the right time. If one of them goes funny, then the whole timetable is off. Don’t you want to take it apart, sometimes, to see what all those pieces are meant to do?”

“You want to take Kira apart.” The nodding, again, as Light took a bite of the pumpkin loaf. “See what he’s made of. That makes sense.” Understanding warmed Light’s eyes. They were real, human, and disarmingly genuine. “We’re very similar, you know. I almost wish we could stay friends.”

“Hm.” L stole a hunk of pumpkin bread, chewing it with vigor. “Sure.”

“If it’s all right with you,” Light said, “I think I’ll try to remember our time together.” His next bite – banana bread – he chewed with a faint grin, caught mostly in the corners. “Forgetting isn’t really an option anymore.”

A week later, Light texted L.

_I got you that gift. Left it in your room._

L rolled his eyes and prepared to open a crudely wrapped box gift. He received more than enough of them from the orphanage children – shaving kits; leather wallets; and other “men’s” gifts he had no use for. Light, he hoped, had more imagination and maybe bought a good tea set for him. A laugh touched his lips as he thought of Light at the other end of a handcuff chain saying Watari and he needed more than one tea set.

“A good one for show,” Light had explained, “and one for everyday use. Then Watari doesn’t have to wash the cups all the time.”

As L mounted the stairs to his room from the taskforce computer room, he considered how typical it was for Light to cover his aesthetic whims with concern for others. Like a baker who knew their mix was stale and coated the cake with thick frosting to hide dry, flavorless crumb, Light placed emphasis on presentation over substance. Although, L admitted Light didn’t lack for substance either, which made his efforts more grating. He slipped his door key through the lock and thought, as the lock went from red to green, _I might miss him more if he were a cake._

His key fell through wide fingers as he entered. The door swung closed behind him, but L didn’t look, didn’t move even as the lock click rang clear through the room. Instead, his eyes focused on the bed: on the “gift.”

“Hello.” Light rolled his head to peer at L through mussed bangs. “You took your time.”

L had no response. He studied the long figure and the set of cuffs restraining Light: the same set from confinement months ago. A looseness in the familiar black shirt and pants he wore left L with an uncomfortable sensation of connected dots. Wrists behind his back, Light curved his back and shifted until he faced L entirely.

“I found these clothes in my hamper when I got home,” Light said. “I thought my dad threw them away after my confinement but turns out he just put them in the laundry.”

“He should have gotten rid of them.”

“People like to remember,” Light said. “Even bad things. Or maybe he didn’t even think about where they were from. It is just a black shirt and pants.”

Light’s eyes shone with a reflective glimmer – a fox staring over a nighttime highway. “But this is a nice thing for you to see, isn’t it? Your Kira, right where you wanted him.”

“You’re not Kira.” Shuffling further inside, L put his key card on the dresser. The confession was too bitter a pill to swallow, so he dismissed it; having his suspect tell him instead of L proving Light's guilt didn't suit what L wanted. 

“I won’t tell anyone,” Light said, “if you don’t tell anyone. It’ll be our little secret.”

It was then L stopped completely. He faced Light, whose features stood out more soft than he’d ever seen them. Even during their time chained together, L saw Light change his expressions to suit circumstances as varied as licorice flavors but never break free from the milk-and-honey fullness of his face. Only chips appeared, never whole sections broken in twain; no one had ever taken something from Light to hollow out his cheeks. Except for L, he supposed, who used fingernails to take those chips and make a meal of them.

“You don’t have anything to tell a single soul.” L let his voice be a firm hand on Light’s winsome smile, the tooth and pink of it bothering him. “What you’ve done is call yourself the biggest killer in history, and left me in charge of your fate.”

“Ugh.” Light snorted. “What are you going to do to me?” His brown eyes glittered full of cruel, youthful gold. “Are you going to hurt me? Get even?”

“Even?” L sat on the bed, dipping it enough that Light slid toward him. “I have nothing to get even with Kira for. His crimes are against humankind, not just me.”

“You’re not very good at playing, are you?” A frown spoiled Light’s face. “No wonder Kira got away from you for so long.” He paused, and L gave a silent prayer Light said nothing more. As with most prayers, it went unanswered. “You don’t have any imagination. It’s easy to outsmart someone who can’t think outside their own head.”

L turned and stared at Light, puzzling over how his bound form still looked satisfied. Emotions coursed through him – their hot slither in his veins uncomfortable but warming – and he sat still waiting to see what won out. After a moment, a dispassionate anger rose through the floorboards, his body’s house flooded and pushing him to action.

Yet, a rotted softness ebbed in L’s heart and he knew his face had that look on it – fond inevitability. No matter how Light turned the gears and begged the clock to ring midnight, somehow the machine rang out noon. L shook his head; perhaps Light wasn’t meant to be understood. He needed to be made to understand how things worked.

Wordlessly, L put his arm over Light’s chest and leaned his full weight on it. He pinched Light’s nose and flattened his other fingers over Light’s mouth. Then, L squeezed until it hurt.

"Why did you do this?" He asked. "Why are you like this?"

Underneath him, thrashing threatened to destabilize the seal, let in precious air, but L was strong. Stronger than a bound eighteen year old, that was for sure.

“What did you think I could give you?” He tilted his head, examining the clean, near bloodless whites of Light’s eyes. “You wanted to shock me, and maybe, you even wanted me to take you all tied up. What carnal thoughts you have, little Light.”

A whiny, nostrils flared and head shaking side to side, Light fought like the thoroughbred he was, always had been. Rare, beautiful beasts meant for winning, L remembered of the creatures, but only after being broken. Heaving harder on Light’s chest, he cherished the thin wheeze tumbling through those lungs only centimeters beneath him.

“Imagination is going to kill you,” he said. “You’re going to keep imagining situations where you get what you want, and I’ll give you this, you’re right a lot. More than a person should be right. But it won’t last.” L pressed his fingers down on the milk-and-honey skin, its rich softness sinking under the violence, until tears caught in Light’s eyes. “Other people have imaginations far bigger and worse than yours.”

He let go and Light gasped, eyes red and tears streaming over flushed cheeks. At first, L thought he was hyperventilating although his swallows steadied quicker, suggesting only a renewed excitement for breath. Neither of them looked the other in the eye. The willowy little gulping sobs Light let out painted enough of a picture for L. When he finally looked, a damp spot formed around where Light buried his head in a pillow, body curled and hands twitching in their bindings. His anger simmered, then settled, and left L in a quiet house.

“I” – Light gulped, his voice ragged and jellied from mucus – “I _hate_ you. I _Hate_ You So Much.”

“I take back what I said to you before.” L folded his hands in his lap; his palms were wet from Light’s mouth and nose. “When I told you to forget all the bad things that have happened to you, I was wrong. Remember everything about how much you hate me. It’ll make you smarter, next time.”

“H-he’ll never trust me,” Light sobbed.

“What?”

“My dad.” Turn by turn, Light sat up and glared at L – but there was no venom in his angry stare. It was the bottomless unhappiness of someone admitting defeat. “He’ll never trust me again, as long as I live, because of _you._ All he’ll ever see when he looks at me is these handcuffs, these black clothes. Someone who _might_ be Kira.”

“Your father loves you,” L said.

“I know he’ll love me but it won’t ever be full again.” Snot dripped from his nose, aging him down along with hair half-stuck to Light’s sticky cheeks. “His love will always be half, only the half he thinks isn’t a murderer, and it’s all because of _you_.”

A lot of things stood on the tip of L’s tongue. He might have said, “That’s not true,” or “I’m sure he’ll see reason eventually.” He could have said nothing, too, and let his silence fill in a more kind, hopeful phrase Light wanted to hear. But in his chest, L was tired. It had been such a long time, the Kira case, to stay awake. Part of him was almost happy, hearing Light’s clumsy sadness; he worried all this had been about him.

“You’re right.” L shrugged, bent over and kissed Light on the temple. “I’m sorry.”

He asked Light to turn around, and L unhooked the handcuffs. When his finger skimmed raised blue veins, they jolted but didn’t strike out. Light let him unlock his ankles too, watching as L stroked the soles of his feet while removing the bindings. Once he was free, Light got up and walked out of the room. He stopped at the door, hand on the frame.

Illuminated by honey-yellow hallway lamps, L called Light beautiful within the walls of his mind. He had called Light many things, and this one didn’t seem right to say out loud.

“I’m going to stay here tonight,” Light said. “But I’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Stay for breakfast.”

“No.” Light shook his head. “No. I have to take these clothes back home. My dad will ask if I don't.” He took a deep breath, but didn’t look back. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here for work tomorrow.”

As Light’s shadow grew long in the hall, L lay back onto the pillows. They smelled like salt, earth – human smells, he thought. Slowly, he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Not a single dream, but then again, L never dreamed of much.

He didn’t tell anyone about the night. Although L had no way to know, he assumed Light didn’t tell anyone about it either; probably kept it their secret. Sometimes, L wondered if Light forgot about the night happening, the way a person can make something untrue just by forgetting it hard enough – burning, burning all their secrets until they never existed at all.

**Author's Note:**

> oh you loved it? leave a comment below and lemme know how you loved it!
> 
> you can also check out my tumblr where there's even MORE nonsense, @translightyagami.


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